


a million different pieces looking back at you

by raspberrylimonade



Series: Never Left My Mind verse [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: (that's just a fancy way of saying Jason didn't die), Canon Divergence, F/M, Jason-Centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 01:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15108572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberrylimonade/pseuds/raspberrylimonade
Summary: “You’re always saying her name,” Leo teased him once, back on the Argo II. “Literally, every time she gets hurt or something attacks.‘Pipes!’”A year and a half - inclusive of one break up, one near-death experience, and one six-month coma - later, nothing had changed.He wakes up in the middle of the night, screaming her name.





	a million different pieces looking back at you

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Jason Grace week 2018.
> 
> Title from 'Better' by SYML.

He wakes up in the middle of night, screaming her name.

He grasps wildly in the dark, hands fisting around his blankets. Sweat beads his forehead, and his heart pounds loudly in his aching chest. The only reason he hasn’t jerked up in bed is because he is still too weak, and the action too painful.

The dreams differ in detail, but always end the same.

Sometimes Caligula slaps her and she never gets up. Sometimes she’s already dead before that damned horse (Sorry, Percy) drags her and Apollo into the room. Sometimes she fights the emperor one on one, a beautiful whirlwind of strength and rage, while Jason watches helplessly from inside his own tornado prison, where no one can hear him scream himself hoarse, as she gets stabbed fatally, over and over.

“You’re always saying her name,” Leo teased him once, back on the Argo II. “Literally, every time she gets hurt or something attacks.  _ ‘Pipes!’ _ ”

A year and a half - inclusive of one break up, one near-death experience, and one six-month coma - later, nothing had changed.

He hears footfalls outside his room. Seconds later, his door creaks open and a head of curly hair breaches the threshold. The light in the hallway is turned on, illuminating the control panel next to the temperature gauge on the wall. The small, green light is not on, which means there was no electric surge this time. Later, Jason will think of it as a small relief.

More than once, he’d summoned a lightning strike on the building. After the third blackout, Leo disappeared for a day and returned with celestial bronze plates and wires. Wherever and however he had procured so much of the material, he never explained. But by the next week, Jason’s bedroom had been specially grounded. The landlord, a former legionnaire that Reyna had put them in contact with, had given Jason a look of pity when he asked about their ‘maintenance’.

Leo is next to him now, carefully patting Jason on the back.

“It was just a dream,” he coaxes. “It was just a dream.”

It’s unfair how dying stripped him of his demigod powers but not of the nightmares.

“Can you…can you just…” Jason manages, gasping for breath.

Leo understands. He hooks his arms under Jason’s and hoists him up. Together, they stumble to the bathroom. Calypso is already inside, knowing what to do in situations like this. She pulls open the bathroom cabinet and retrieves a drachmas. They keep a stash there reserved specifically for this use. Jason fumbles and steadies himself against the sink as Leo turns on the tap. It’s a ritual they’ve practiced multiple times.

She is usually asleep when they call her, but tonight she is awake. She is sitting on the porch of her family’s small home, her back to them, silhouetted against a clear, bejeweled sky.

“Piper,” he croaks.

Her head whips around, and even with two states and a magical screen between them, one look in her eyes is enough to calm Jason’s nerves. They shimmer like the stars in the background even though her face is shadowed by the porch cover. Her hair is beautifully mussed. Her frame is wrapped in a large flannel shirt over her pyjamas.

“Jason.”

It’s almost pathetic how his brain still melts when he hears her voice, but like her name on his lips, he can’t help it. She is his eye in the hurricane, his refuge in the middle of a storm. He cannot imagine a life without her in it, regardless of where they stand with each other.

For a long moment, all they do is stare at each other. The only sounds are the running water in the bathroom, and the insects buzzing on her end. Jason feels the tension seep slowly out of his body.

“Sorry,” he says finally, voice hoarse. “I just needed to know you’re okay.”

Piper nods. She knows he does not need words, just her virtual presence and the reassurance that she is alive. She understands because sometimes she has them too, the nightmares. 

They fall into an easy silence again. Now that he is no longer in a state of panic, he is getting exhausted again. Piper too, despite being awake, has heavy eyelids. They both need sleep.

He is about to tell her goodnight when she speaks first.

“Are you?”

He blinks drearily. “Huh?”

“Are  _ you _ okay?” Piper asks.

He wishes he could say ‘yes’, or, ‘I am now’, but all that comes out is a heavy sigh. His head drops forward, hanging over the edge of the sink.

“I’m getting there.” It’s an admission to himself as much as it is to her.

“Do you want me to go over there?” she offers, leaning towards him.

_ Yes, _ he wants to say.  _ Yes, please. I need you.  _ But then her hair brushes over her shoulders as she scoots closer to the Iris Message. Apollo told him she had cut it short after that  _ incident, _ but it had grown out again since. It reminds Jason of how much she has grown as a person. It wouldn’t be fair, he thinks, to trouble her again for his sake.

So he shakes his head. “I’ll be okay,” he assures her.

He has to promise her, of course, that he would tell her if there’s anything wrong. However, she eventually gives in and agrees not to call Leo to pick her up for now. They whisper their goodnights, and Jason thanks Leo and Calypso on his way back to his bedroom.

He falls back into slumber, this one kinder than the last, with stars behind his eyelids.


End file.
